Gasteria 'Little Warty'
Gasteria 'Little Warty is a popular hybrid gasteria cultivar, prized for its neat rosettes of thick, tongue-shaped leaves banded with raised, warty tubercles. It is grown both as a plain green plant and as a prized variegated form with soft cream margins. Compact, tough and forgiving, it is one of the most widely circulated gasterias in the hobby and a reliable windowsill succulent.
Description
'Little Warty' grows as a small, slowly clustering succulent that offsets to form tidy clumps over time. The leaves are distichous at first — arranged in a flat, two-ranked fan in young plants — before older, larger specimens begin to spiral into a loose rosette. Each leaf is thick, blunt-tipped and strap- to tongue-shaped, dark green and firm, with cross-bands of pale, raised tubercles that give the plant its characteristic "warty" texture and its name.
The prized variegated form carries creamy to yellowish margins and streaks running along the leaf, contrasting with the darker green centre and the pale warts. Like most gasterias, it produces arching flower spikes bearing pendulous, curved tubular flowers in shades of pink, orange and green — the swollen, stomach-shaped bloom that gives the genus its name.
Cultivation
Care follows the parent genus; see Gasteria for full detail. In short, 'Little Warty' is an easy-going, shade-tolerant succulent that does best in bright, indirect light rather than harsh full sun, which can scorch or bleach the leaves. Grow it in a free-draining mix and water only once the soil has dried out, easing off in winter to keep the plant cool and dry. See Watering and Repotting for general technique.
The variegated form deserves a couple of extra notes. Because its cream tissue lacks chlorophyll, variegated plants grow more slowly and are a little more sensitive: give them steady bright light to hold the variegation without the pale zones burning, and avoid a baking south-facing sill in high summer. Highly variegated offsets with little green can be weak, so when dividing, keep offsets that carry a healthy share of green tissue.
Propagation
'Little Warty' is easily increased from the offsets it forms around the base — the standard method for keeping the cultivar true to type. It can also be grown from leaf cuttings, though gasteria leaves are slow to root and strike less reliably than those of many other succulents. Variegated plants are always propagated vegetatively, as seed-grown seedlings will not reliably reproduce the variegation. See Propagation — offsets and Propagation — cuttings.
See also
- Gasteria — the genus overview
- Soil and potting mix · Watering · Propagation — offsets · Repotting